[MUD-Dev] Re: The Future of MMOGs... what's next? (fwd)

[John Robert Arras]

On Wed, 11 Jun 2002, Matt Mihaly <the_logos at achaea.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Jun 2002, John Robert Arras wrote:

>> This is not to say that I am opposed to players creating
>> things. It's just that you can't let people make their own little
>> worlds to play in and then let them return to the main game.

> Why not? Furcadia does exactly this, I believe.

Furcadia, appears to be less competitive than most MUDs are.  From
their page, they say that they focus on a friendly, roleplaying
atmosphere. It also looks like they allow people to add art (like
restringing an item in a text game) and they may let people build
their own zones, and it's probably due to having a more focused
playerbase and not as much emphasis on game mechanics. In that case,
you can let people add more kinds of content since they can't mess
things up as easily.  Also, the admins probably check everything
that goes in.

My big problem with the original article is that the kinds of
content generation that the author used as an example are not
controlled or checked. They don't have to be since each individual
piece is independent.

Since I want to have things to do in the world and since I want to
have my actions count count, I can't imagine a game that I would
want to play that lets any old person build things for the world
without a great deal of control from the owners of the game. Lord
knows that builders make mistakes that let people cheat, and they're
not even trying to be cheater. What happens when people with a
vested interest in cheating get the tools to do that?

Example:

  Would you let me build an area for your MUD and put it into play
  without any kind of checking?

I think you can let players create content for the world but it
REALLY has to be controlled much more than the creation of MODs for
FPSes or RTSes that give the creator total freedom.


John

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